It is past time for the West to tell Russia that if it continues down this path, its fantasy of a hostile West seeking the overthrow of Putin will become a reality. Russia could hardly claim this, too, was an escalation, when it has long told the world and itself that it is already at war with the West.
It’s hard to imagine any other country being permitted by the world to wage the kind of campaign Russia has in Ukraine (and in Syria before it); still less with an overt
agenda of exterminating the Ukrainian people.
And yet, Russia’s UN Security Council veto and the fear it has instilled through nuclear propaganda have given it a free pass to behave as it wishes, without fear of interference from a global community looking on in either ambivalence or helpless paralysis.
That sets a disastrous example for other aggressive powers around the world. It says possession of nuclear weapons allows you to wage genocidal wars of destruction against your neighbors, because other nations won’t intervene.
If that’s not the message the US and the West want other aggressor states around the world to receive, then supply of Patriot should be followed by far more direct and assertive means of dissuading Moscow.